Hedge Funds

Beverly Hills hedge fund manager Bradley L. Ruderman surrendered to FBI agents Friday after being criminally charged in federal court in Los Angeles with bilking investors out of about $44 million in a wire fraud scheme. Ruderman's surrender came two weeks after a federal judge shut down his hedge funds, Ruderman Capital Partners and Ruderman Capital Partners A, in response to a civil suit filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

A hedge-fund swindler who set off a national manhunt when he faked his suicide to avoid reporting to prison rode his scooter to a small-town police station in Massachusetts on Wednesday morning and turned himself in while talking to his mother on his cellphone. Authorities say Samuel Israel III showed up at the police station in Southwick after hiding out for the last three weeks in his RV. The U.S.

Less than two months after Maguire Properties Inc. ended a power struggle with the appointment of a new chief executive, the Los Angeles office landlord is again under pressure from dissident shareholders. Now two hedge funds have renewed efforts to reshape the company that is the largest owner of premium office space in downtown Los Angeles. Its holdings include US Bank Tower, the tallest building in the West.

Andrew Lahde, the Santa Monica hedge fund manager who shot to fame with an 870% gain last year by betting on the subprime mortgage collapse, has left the building -- with a bang. Lahde, 37, who closed his operations last month citing the risk of trading with teetering banks, said goodbye Friday to his clients and good riddance to the investment world with a stinging, widely circulated letter skewering "idiot" traders, the U.S. government and marijuana laws.

The founder and president of Bernard Madoff Investment Securities was charged by federal prosecutors Thursday in an alleged $50-billion fraud at his advisory business. Bernard Madoff, 70, was arrested by the FBI and charged with a single count of securities fraud. He was released on a $10-million bond. He was also sued by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Underscoring the growing clout of hedge funds, federal regulators are seeking to determine whether Wall Street stock brokerages routinely leak sensitive trading information to people running these investment vehicles.

The secretive world of hedge funds and corporate buyout specialists took a big step into the mainstream Thursday: For the first time, a U.S.-based manager of such funds became a publicly traded company. Hedge funds and buyout firms cater to wealthy, sophisticated investors who are looking for big profits and are unafraid to take sizable risks.

When Goldman Sachs Group Inc. went public in May 1999, some on Wall Street figured it was a signal to bail out of brokerage stocks. If Goldman was letting the public into its business after 130 years as a highly profitable -- and secretive -- private partnership, the insiders must have known that was as good as it would get. Hardly. Goldman earned an astounding $9.5 billion last year, a 252% increase from its profit of $2.7 billion in 1999.